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The best album to begin your journey to the Forgotten Tomb.

Italian horde Forgotten Tomb are rather a 'Marmite'-esque band in extreme metal circles. Their overt attempts to brand themselves as depressive and suicidal can provoke mockery and spite from the 'trve' brigade, but nobody can dispute their unique ability to forge memorable songs and conjure a truly bleak vision of misanthropic despair. They have penned several excellent albums and this has to be up there with the best of them. Rather like Greerk titans Rotting Christ, they have, in latter years, gone through a more rock-based and softer period. Rotting Christ have managed to get this out of their system, Sentenced never did, and I can only hope that Forgotten Tomb will manage it. 'Love's Burial Ground' is certainly the best place to start for anyone who is yet to sample the unique, bleak beauty of FT and I would have no hesitation in recommending the bulk of their catalogue to open-minded extreme metal fans.

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Forgotten Tomb's best album to date

Released in 2004, 'Love's Burial Ground' is the third and for my money best full length by Italian depressive black metal/doom band Forgotten Tomb. As before, the songs on offer mix raw, nihilistic and chaotic fast-paced black metal with despondently-melodic, doomy passages in the vein of old Katatonia, accentuated by the anguished, rasped screams and howls of vocalist Herr Morbid.

The songs are all very drawn-out and can be somewhat meandering on occasion, and the frequent, distant-sounding marching-band interludes dont help with this, although they do succeed in adding to the album's atmosphere. This disjointedness is made up for by the excellent momentum that is also frequently evident throughout however, especially on the track 'Alone', which takes its time in building up through peaks and troughs to a stunning plateau of melancholy melodic riffs, and stands as the best track the band has penned to date. The lyrics unsuprisingly deal with the usual subject matter of extreme depression, although they can be disarmingly honest on occasion, particularly on the aformentioned standout track.